That's a design "feature." Seems as though some folks don't have the patience to teach themselves to keep their cotton-picking thumbs off the touchpad when they're typing. So Barry disabled "tap." Sad, eh?

Nope, that's my doing in Dougals reworked xorgwizard. Before, the touchpad was treated as a ps/2 mouse and on many touchpads the slightest touch would cause a click. Also, none of the other touchpad features where availble.

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf-synaptic. If you want to enable touch pad tapping (touching the pad to click the mouse) change "MaxTapTime" to 130 found in xorg.conf. You can adjust this number as needed. You must restart X for the changes to take effect! Here's the readme:

This is a driver for the Synaptics TouchPad for XOrg/XFree86 4.x. A
Synaptics touchpad by default operates in compatibility mode by
emulating a standard mouse. However, by using a dedicated driver, more
advanced features of the touchpad becomes available, such as:

- Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed.
- Button events through short touching of the touchpad.
- Double-Button events through double short touching of the touchpad.
- Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the
touchpad.
- Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of
the touchpad.
- Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving
the finger on the right side of the touchpad.
- The up/down button sends button four/five events.
- Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving
the finger on the lower side of the touchpad.
- The multi-buttons send button four/five events, and six/seven
events for horizontal scrolling.
- Adjustable finger detection.
- Multifinger taps: two finger for middle button and three finger
for right button events. (Needs hardware support. Not all models
implement this feature.)
- Run-time configuration using shared memory. This means you can
change parameter settings without restarting the X server.

Note that depending on the touchpad firmware, some of these features
might be available even without using the synaptics driver. Note also
that some functions are not available on all touchpad models, because
they need support from the touchpad hardware/firmware. (Multifinger
taps for example.)

Installation
------------

See the INSTALL file for detailed installation instructions.

Compatibility
-------------

The driver has been reported to work on a number of different laptop
computers. See the COMPATIBILITY file for the list. If your computer
is not listed, please let me (petero2@telia.com) know if the driver
works on your computer.

Parameters
----------

See the synaptics(5) manual page for a description of the available
driver parameters.

FAQ
---

* Is this free software?

Yes, the source code is released under the GNU General Public
License.

* When will the driver be included in the XOrg distribution?

This is unlikely to happen because of copyright issues. Although
the GPL license is compatible with the license used by the XOrg X
server, the XOrg project doesn't want to include GPL code in their
source code, because it would effectively make the whole XOrg
project GPL. The synaptics license can't be changed unless all
copyright holders agree to change the license, but previous
attempts to find all copyright holders for the synaptics source
code have failed.

So unfortunately, the best we can currently hope for is that the
synaptics driver is included as a separate package by the major
distributions.

* How do I use this driver with Linux kernel 2.6.x?

You need to have the "evdev" driver loaded or compiled into the
kernel (CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV). Set the "Protocol" parameter in the X
configuration file to "auto-dev". Also, if you set the "Device"
parameter to "/dev/psaux", the same X configuration file should
work for a 2.4.x kernel.

When configuring the kernel, enable PS/2 mouse support
(CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2).

* It still doesn't work with a 2.6 kernel.

Some distributions come with an incomplete /dev directory. The
driver needs the /dev/input/eventX device nodes. Try to create
them manually if they don't exist already. (Look at
/proc/bus/input/devices to figure out how many nodes you need.)

If you set MaxTapTime=0 in the X config file then the touchpad
will not use tapping at all, i.e. touching/tapping will not be
taken as a mouse click.

If, instead, you set MaxTapMove=0 in the X config file, then the
touchpad will not use tapping for a single finger tap (left mouse
button click) but will for the two and three finger tap (middle
and right button click).

* Why did tap-to-click stop working after I upgraded from an old version?

Time is now measured in milliseconds instead of "number of
packets". In practice, this means that if you are upgrading from
an old version, you need to change MaxTapTime and
EmulateMidButtonTime to make "tap to click" work. Good values are
180 and 75 respectively.

* Gnome scrollbars scroll too much when using tap-to-click. Why?

The ClickTime parameter is probably too big. Try setting it to
100. Gnome scrollbars use auto repeat, ie if you press the left
mouse button and keep it pressed, the scroll bar will move until
you release the button. This will lead to problems if the tap time
is longer than the delay before auto repeat starts.

* Vertical and horizontal scrolling events are mixed up. How come?

Probably because some X startup/login script uses xmodmap to remap
the mouse buttons. Correct settings for the touchpad are:

xmodmap -e 'pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7'

You can check the current settings by running:

xmodmap -pp

* Horizontal scrolling doesn't work in some programs. Is it a driver
bug?

No, probably not. Support for horizontal scroll events must be
handled by the application programs. Not all programs do that
yet. Ask the authors of the application in question to implement
support for horizontal scroll events.

You can use the "xev" program to check if the synaptics driver
generates the horizontal scroll events.

* Can the driver be used together with gpm?

No, not reliably, if you are using a 2.4.x kernel. The gpm driver
and the X driver both try to read data from the touchpad, and if
they try to read at the same time, both drivers see incomplete
data and don't know how to interpret it.

If you are running a 2.6.x kernel though, there should be no
conflict, because the kernel driver will make sure both user space
drivers receive all events from the touchpad.

* How do I compile the driver?

Beginning with version 0.11.8, it should be possible to compile
the driver by simply running "make". This will compile a driver
for XFree86 4.2.x, which will also work for 4.3.x versions of
XFree86.

If you have an older version of XFree86, you will need an
installed X source tree. On an RPM based distribution, you can
build a suitable source tree by installing the XFree86 source RPM
and compile it. For example, in RedHat 9, use the following
commands:

Then change the TOP variable in the Makefile to match the version
of XFree86 you are using. In the example above, set

TOP = /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/XFree86-4.3.0/xc

* Can I use this driver with an ALPS Glidepoint device?

Yes, see the README.alps file for more information.

* The driver says "reset failed" and the touchpad doesn't work. What
can I do?

This problem has been reported for some Compaq models. It's
currently not known why it happens, but removing the reset command
from the driver appears to make it work. If you use a 2.4 linux
kernel, replace the contents of the ps2_synaptics_reset() function
in ps2comm.c with a "return TRUE;" statement. If you use a 2.6
linux kernel, remove the while loop in synaptics_query_hardware()
in the file drivers/input/mouse/synaptics.c in the linux kernel
source code.

Authors
-------

Many people have contributed to this driver. Look at the top of
synaptics.c and ps2comm.c for details.

The current maintainer is Peter Osterlund <petero2@telia.com>.

Installation of the Synaptics Touchpad Driver for XOrg/XFree 4.x
================================================================

Author: Stefan Gmeiner <riddlebox@freesurf.ch>

Requirements
------------

1. You need X include files. On RPM based systems, they are usually
included in the XFree86-devel package. On Debian systems, you need
to install the packages x-dev, libx11-dev and libxext-dev.

2. For use with kernel 2.6.x you need to enable synaptics touchpad
support when configuring the kernel (CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2). You also
need support for the evdev interface (CONFIG_INPUT_EVDEV). If you
compile evdev as a module, make sure it is loaded before starting
the X server, as it will not be auto-loaded.

3. If you use XFree86 version 4.0 or 4.1, you will need the XFree86
source code to compile the driver. See the "How do I compile the
driver?" section in the FAQ in the README file for details.

2. Copy the driver module "synaptics_drv.o" into the XFree module
path. This path is usually "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/", and
running "make install" as root will do this for you. Note though
that some distributions have a different module path. For example,
in Gentoo 1.4 (with XFree86 4.3.0), the correct path is
"/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers".

3. Add the driver to the XFree configuration file (usually called
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/XF86Config)

Section "Module"
...
Load "synaptics"
...
EndSection

4. Add/Replace in the InputDevice section for the touchpad the
following lines:

Note! You can not have more than one core pointer, so if you want
to use an external mouse too, you have to set all mouse input
devices except one to "AlwaysCore" instead of "CorePointer". For
example:

This also applies if you are using a 2.6 linux kernel and the
touchpad contains a "pass through" device. Usually a pass through
device is a touch stick located in the middle of the keyboard, but
it can also be a separate set of buttons located next to the
touchpad. If you want the pass through device to be enabled in X,
the second InputDevice is needed. If there is a line in
/proc/bus/input/devices that begins with "P: Phys=synaptics-pt" it
means that the kernel has found a pass through device.

6. Start/Restart the X Server. If the touchpad doesn't work:
a) Check the XFree log file. This file is usually called
/var/log/XFree86.0.log.
b) Try to start the X server with 'startx -- -logverbose 8' for
more output.

7. If you want to be able to change driver parameters without
restarting the X server, enable the "SHMConfig" option in the XFree
configuration file. You can then use the "synclient" program to
query and modify driver parameters on the fly.
Note! This is not secure if you are in an untrusted multiuser
environment. All local users can change the parameters at any
time.

If you can't get the driver working, check the trouble-shooting.txt
file for common problems. If that doesn't help, mail the log files and
the configuration file to petero2@telia.com. If you use a 2.6.x linux
kernel, also mail the output from dmesg and the output from
"cat /proc/bus/input/devices".

The prior discussion in this wide-ranging thread suggested that the
"tap" feature of a laptop touchpad has been disabled - this is not
correct in all cases - mine works fine.

First item -- for which I need a solution ...

When I run the isoburn app in 2.4 I am greeted with the following pop-
up warning:

"cdrecord: WARNING: Drive returns wrong startsec (0) using -150"

Should I be concerned or is this another of those to-be-ignored errors
that will eventually be eliminated or captured and discarded and not
displayed?_________________Thanks! DavidHome page: http://nevils-station.comDon't googleSearch!http://duckduckgo.com
TahrPup64 & Lighthouse64-b602 & JL64-603

When I run the isoburn app in 2.4 I am greeted with the following pop-
up warning:

"cdrecord: WARNING: Drive returns wrong startsec (0) using -150"

Should I be concerned or is this another of those to-be-ignored errors
that will eventually be eliminated or captured and discarded and not
displayed?

I ignored the warning and used the CD to copy the four Frugal Install files.
No further errors or warnings observed.

I see no difference between my prior incomplete 2.6 install and the current
2.6.1 install -- most troublesome is the continued failure to activate my USB
mouse - -- it had been working prior to 2.6 and even afterwards but I booted
my laptop once without the USB mouse attached and now it never works.

-- most troublesome is the continued failure to activate my USB
mouse - -- it had been working prior to 2.6 and even afterwards but I booted
my laptop once without the USB mouse attached and now it never works.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum